


Handcast

by RueAnokiRiley



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blood and Violence, Did I mention the violence, Gratuitous Violence, Hate Sex, Hate fucking that grew a plot, Hitman AU, I could technically tag this as a five plus one but god help me i would hate myself, Improper use of run on sentences, M/M, Minor Character Death, THERE IS NO LOVE HERE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-09 20:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13488816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RueAnokiRiley/pseuds/RueAnokiRiley
Summary: All Ulaz wants to do is complete his contracts and get his cash. That's it. Of course, it can't be that simple.Aka the hate fuck that grew a plot.





	Handcast

**Author's Note:**

> Is it perfect? No. Am I sick of editing it? Yes.

The first time he sees him, Ulaz makes the mistake of underestimating him. He’s crouched behind a stack of crates on the dingy docks of another crime-ridden city, watching their targets and waiting for the signal. The man is set back from the rest, leaning slightly on the shiny black car his crew rode here in, looking rather bored in a long, dark coat as two lackeys haul out crate after wooden crate. The contents pass inspection, and Ulaz counts as they’re loaded into the car’s trunk. One, two. Five. The trunk slams shut and the order buzzes in his ear. “Go.” 

Ulaz’s blade is through the first two men before he takes another breath, their bodies sagging silently to wooden boards that would never be truly dry. Two long strides and he guts another, the shadowed shapes of his team flickering around the corners of his eyes. One by one they fall, half of them down before the first shot echoes off of concrete walls. It’s him, of course, Ulaz sees – the same man, the one who’d looked so bored. One slick lock of the man’s hair falls out of place as he shoots with purpose, interest sparking in his strange yellow eyes. The man’s team scrambles their weapons but they’re no match. Shouts and gunshots fill the air as clothes split and flesh tears, only to be cut off by wet gurgles and spraying blood as a team of experts slaughters the juvenile band of would-be weapons dealers.

Ulaz wrenches his knife out of another chest and spots the man. He’s retreating, darkness swallowing him as if he belongs to it. The man shoots twice and two of Ulaz’s team go down, dead before they hit the ground. In the space of a blink, there’s no sign he was ever there. 

The team rounds up their dead to be weighted down thrown into the water. Ulaz, curious, plucks a bullet out of one of the men. Hand-cast. Gold.

They climb into their newly-acquired car and speed away to collect their payment.

 

The second time they meet, Ulaz is working alone. The target is a slippery man with a loose mouth, and if he were smart, he’d have stayed low, but the casino was the one habit he hadn’t shook. Addiction is a powerful thing, Ulaz muses, and stubs out his cigarette before following the man inside. 

Smoky air and raucous noise greets him – despite the late hour, the casino is packed. His eyes widen in surprise over the edge of his glass as the target is greeted by a familiar-looking man. Ulaz struggles to place a name to the face as the men greet each other with a handshake and a clap to the back, like old friends. It nags at him over hours as the target rolls his dice, losing and losing again, sticking to the green felt like glue and refusing to give Ulaz the opening he needs. 

Finally, the two men depart the table and Ulaz tails them closely. He weaves through crowds like a wave, the lapels of his jacket brushing against the hair of those almost a foot shorter than him. This is why he doesn’t take these jobs, he thinks. He can hide his height surprisingly well under the cover of darkness, but here he sticks out like a nearly-seven-foot-tall sore thumb. He turns the corner to the hallway they took and sees the door to the alley gently close. _Fuck._

He sprints the distance and slips out the door just as a silenced gun fires. The target falls to the ground, blood spilling into newly-fallen snow in a pool around his head. Ulaz barely catches the man’s yellow gaze as he slips, once again, into the shadows, and it’s then that Ulaz finally places him. His fist curls at his side but it’s over, his mark is dead and useless and the killer is gone. 

When he gets home, he finds the gold bullet he’d saved and carries it to three of his trusted sources. None of them can give him a name. 

 

Over ten years of committing despicable acts for cold cash, Ulaz has stopped believing in many things. God was probably the first, but that faith died long before his first murder. Karma was next. Coincidences, however, he still thought were possible. 

He mulls it over as he spots the man for the third time, through a crack in the warehouse door he’s guarding. The woman who hired Ulaz is still searching the office for a stolen deed, the importance of which must have been understated when he had taken this job, if this man was here. The two times Ulaz had spotted him previously, he’d been contracted for fifty grand a piece. He would have to renegotiate their terms. 

The man is exchanging terse words with the guard they’d slipped past on the way in, apparently checking for the all-clear. The pair are pacing the length of the building, and they’re nearly past when the man’s head snaps up. Ulaz swears he sees him sniff the air before he’s gone in a flash of movement, too fast for Ulaz to follow. _Not good._

“We’re leaving,” he hisses to his cheapskate of a client as he prowls into the office. 

“I haven’t found it yet,” she growls back, still thumbing through file after file. 

Ulaz grips her arm. “If you want to live to see the morning, we need to leave now.” The memory of the man’s precision shots and calculating gaze has his heart beating just a bit faster. This was not worth being on the other side of that gun, not with only the two of them.

“I’m not leaving without it.” With a glare that could melt steel, she rips her arm out of his grasp and turns back to the file.

He growls and whirls back towards the door, crouching low and pulling his hood over his head. Blinding white hair wasn’t good for staying hidden, and it was too much of an identifier, even with his mask in place. He closes his eyes and focuses on listening beyond the slight ruffling of paper behind him. _Wind through a crack in a high window. The ticking of a clock somewhere in the larger room, echoing slightly._ No tell-tale rustle of coat against shirt, no click of a heel against the concrete floor. Nothing. Near absolute silence, but the hair raises on the back of his neck.

His eyes snap open and meet yellow. Somehow, the man has gotten in without making a single fucking sound, and Ulaz watches as recognition sparks in his eyes. He rolls to the side as the first shot rings out, wood splintering and flying where the center of his forehead had been less than a second before. 

“OUT!” He shouts at the woman, who’s already moving. She jumps and smashes through the office window feet-first, a heavy envelope clutched in her hand. Two shots follow her and he hears her yelp of pain. Ulaz can tell by the echoes, the man is getting closer. 

He’s always, always favored his blades but he’d packed for this. Ulaz edges the tip of the Glock over the top of his makeshift shield and fires three times in rapid succession towards where he’d place the man now. There’s no response ,and he creeps away on the balls of his feet, staying low, kicking over furniture for more cover. He flinches down as wood splinters and a bullet skims past his ear. The window is right above him. The shooter is even closer. _Get out, get out NOW._

Ulaz shoots off three more bullets blindly and makes a jump for it. A groan of pain and a curse sounds from a foot behind him, and he tumbles through the window head-first, tucking his chin into his chest and hoping for the best as the world spins around him. He lands hard and keeps going, rolling into a sprint. 

His client is already over the fence at the end of the alley and booking it towards the car. He doesn’t look back, refuses to, puts all of his focus into pushing his feet off the ground faster and faster. It’s a straight line, hemmed in by walls, and it’s only a matter of how many feet he can make before he gets shot in the back. Ulaz is fast, but not faster than a bullet. His breathing goes ragged as adrenaline floods his veins, he’s going to die, he’s going to die _now_. 

And then he’s on the other side of the fence, staring back at the broken window. The car revs to life behind him. He can taste iron in the back of his throat as he pants and stares. Yellow eyes appear, narrowed, blood dripping down over them. The man is angry. 

Good. 

 

The fourth time, Ulaz isn’t running point - he’s watching from the balcony of a house he would need four lifetimes of work to be able to afford. It’s a beautiful night, warm and dry and quiet, with crickets chirping just outside the high wall that rings in the property. They’d left the lights off, of course, but the moon reflects off the lush foliage in a way that makes him feel an empty sort of longing. 

He hears the successful whistle from inside just as three more shiny black cars pull into the drive. _Fuck._ He was hoping they’d get out clean, but it looked like the second part of their orders would be coming into play after all. _Kill Moreno, and I’ll double your payment._ He whistles – high, low, swooping back up to high – and hears the flurry of movement behind him. The safe door seals shut, the bags rustle as they’re tucked away under bullet proof vests, orders are hissed quietly enough to blend into the chirps and hoots of the encroaching woods. 

The men are climbing out of the car below – and he’s really got to stop using that word, doesn’t he, because it’s never just men, not these days – and approaching the house, fanning out to the sides to cover the entrances. _There he is._ Moreno, in all his glory, coat flapping in the slight breeze, and just beside him - 

_Really?_ Ulaz thinks, because there he is, of course he’s here, this fucking asshole. Yellow eyes and slicked-back hair, and he’s already placing a hand on Moreno’s shoulder and scanning the upper floors with that assessing gaze because apparently he’s a _fucking psychic_. Ulaz didn’t believe in those, either, but he was damn well starting to wonder.

He hears his teammate before he feels the brush at his elbow. “Doesn’t look like much,” Throk says under his breath, easing his rifle into place. Yellow-eyes is still scanning somewhere to the left of them. 

“Hurry,” Ulaz whispers. They might have time, still. No chance of getting closer with the kind of hires Moreno undoubtedly had, but if they could just get one shot - 

The sound rings out through the open air, the vibration of the recoil traveling through the spot where Throk’s arm brushes his. Throk curses at the same time as Ulaz sees it – the shot had been dead-on, but the man had shoved Moreno back. Yellow eyes spots them and starts shouting orders, his guns rising. 

Ulaz is hauled back, back to where the other two are already climbing up onto the roof, ready to scale down the walls and slip back to their rendevous. Throk is seething as he climbs - _it was perfect, the shot was PERFECT, how did he KNOW_ \- but Ulaz knows. He’s seen it before, the seemingly supernatural ability of this man to foil a mission. There’s only one question in his mind. _Who is he?_

 

Ulaz is bleeding. Normally, he’d be able to ignore that fact in favor of more important things, but as he is now – tied hand and foot, concussed, and surrounded on all sides as he’s dragged through lushly carpeted halls – there isn’t really anything left for him to think about except the gaping hole in his thigh. It missed the artery, he thinks, but it’s not going to stop bleeding any time soon, and he’ll have to bandage it before he - 

_Before you what?_ Oh, yeah. 

If any single detail was different, he thinks, he’d be plotting out an escape in his head, but as it is, he’s just fucked. Carpet changes to concrete under him as they pass through a doorway and sounds begin to echo – a room at least two stories tall, Ulaz’s mind supplies automatically, and mostly empty. The dragging stops and he has half a moment to rest before he’s hauled up to his knees, head yanked back. He pants up into the face of his captor, keeping his expression as dead as he can even though his leg is _throbbing._

“So this is him?” The man - _Kobold_ his mind supplies – is old, older than Ulaz is accustomed to seeing in this business. He leans forward in his throne. It’s just a simple chair, same as any of the others on the floor of this club, but when Kobold sits in it, it’s a fucking throne. 

“His given name is unknown, sir, but this is the agent known as Ulaz.” The man holding his hair pipes up. Good. If this man was powerful enough to have found his real name, Ulaz would have been worse than fucked. 

Kobold squints at him through bagged, wrinkled eyes, assessing. “You’ve been causing quite a bit of trouble for some of my friends, _Ulaz_.” The name sounds like a frog’s croak coming out of his mouth and Ulaz stifles the urge to gag. “Enough to warrant a meeting, rather than just a bullet to the head. I’ve heard you’re a man for hire. So let’s strike a deal.” He leans back. “Tell me who hired you, and I’ll let you live. You’ll work for me.” 

Ulaz pants, mustering up enough strength to rip his head out of the grip of the man at his shoulder. It takes some work, raising his chin back up to meet Kobold’s gaze, but he does it, the muscles in his neck twinging with the effort. And then he thinks. 

Kobold’s reputation is as a man of is word. So, Ulaz would probably live, if he gave his answer. He’d be working for Kobold, though – working with the worst scum in the tri-state area, having his life threatened all the while. He’d be working against people he’d known and worked with in the past – not unusual, for someone in his profession, but he did try to avoid it. Worst of all, though – if he gave up his hire, his reputation would be ruined. Forever. And there was no point to him continuing to live with a ruined rep, and half his former employers actively trying to kill him before he can give them away. 

“No,” he spits, shaking as he signs off on his own death. 

Kobold seems to sigh a bit as he sits back. “Morals don’t suit you, Ulaz. I’d hoped you would be smarter.” He flicks two fingers and Ulaz barely has time to register the hand shoving between his shoulders before his head meets the floor, dust immediately clogging his nose as his forehead freezes against concrete. He closes his eyes as he hears the gun cock, and thinks that this is so, so anticlimactic compared to the death he might have imagined for himself, but it does seem fitting. Just another body, found in an empty room with two bullets in the back of his head. 

_Bang_

The shot comes and Ulaz tenses automatically, but his mind is already telling him that it was too far away, that it didn’t make sense, that it didn’t echo right. 

“Sniper!” Someone shouts as two more shots ring off the walls, and weight is collapsing onto his back, shoving him flat on the cold floor. He struggles, trying to throw the body off of him, trying to get his hands free. There’s more shouting as chaos erupts and warm blood splatters across the back of his head. Bodies fall around him and he stops struggling, realizes that this is a massacre and his only chance is to make the killer think he’s already dead. 

Silence finally falls. His breath is too loud, he knows it is, and he tries to calm it, tries to swallow it down past the dust coating his mouth. Cold floor, warm body on his back, hot blood. Stay still. 

A single pair of footsteps approaches. They stop maybe a dozen feet away, as if surveying the blood bath. Ulaz imagines he can feel the gaze travel over him and he tries to project the image he wants. _Dead. You don’t see me. I’m not here, I’m not breathing._

It’s a century before the footsteps retreat. Ulaz waits long minutes as he tracks them, back and back and back further. He counts to one thousand and then counts again, and again, before the itch under his skin is unbearable, and he finally can’t wait any longer. He wiggles his way out from under the body, shivering as the blood seeping into his clothes hits the cool air. 

His struggle around the floor is messy and uncoordinated, crawling and inching through blood and grime, over cooling bodies, but he finds a knife in a boot and then his hands are finally free, and his feet shortly after. 

Ulaz stands shakily, his hands flying to the wound in his thigh - _he’s still fucking bleeding_ \- and wouldn’t that be just perfect. Saved by sheer luck of timing only to bleed out from a damn flesh wound.  
The last thing he sees as he limps away is the glint of a gold bullet, and he knows. 

 

Ulaz would pay good money for a picture of his expression the first time his knife slides into metal instead of flesh. Sentries. He’d heard of them, of course – who hadn’t – but he never would have thought they’d have reached all the way out _here_. 

He reels for half a second before ripping the blade down, his jaw clenching at the excruciating sound of metal on metal. Sparks fly instead of blood and its _wrong_ but he fights through it, ripping his blade out of the base of the sentry’s torso and watching it fall. It twitches, but doesn’t get back up, and now he knows how to kill them. Disable them. Whatever. 

He crouches around a corner and the… energy bolts, of some kind, that they’re shooting blow past in a flurry of light. He wonders if they would kill him, or just stun him. 

“This isn’t Star Wars, you idiot,” Regris pants beside him. “They’ll kill you.” 

“Shut up and save your energy.” Ulaz’s tone would have been harsher, but he’s worried. He’s _really fucking worried_. They’ve known each other for too long, since the beginning, the original group, and the shot to Regris’ chest… it’s deep. No exit wound. And it doesn’t make sense – the energy bolts would have gone straight through, maybe even cauterized the hole, not ripped him open and kept him bleeding.

They have to get out. Ulaz readies his blades at his sides and steels himself, counts his breaths. One. Two. And then he’s around the corner, skidding low and leaping up, rending the sentries’ heads off their shoulders before they can get a shot at him. His one advantage is that they’re slow, and speed is what his body was _made for_. 

Their advantage is numbers – wave upon wave of them advancing, singing the hairs on his arms as he dodges the bolts. He’s panting hard, relying entirely on instinct and muscle memory to carry him through this, barely catching glimpses of his enemies as he spins and falls and jumps. 

Finally, the last of them falls. Ulaz picks his way through piles of sparking metal scrap, rushing, _Regris, Regris_. He turns the corner and slides to his knees. 

He’s still there, still propped against the wall, staring at nothing with glazed eyes. Still breathing. _Thank god_. Ulaz grips him by the shoulders, searches his gaze. “We’re getting out of here.” 

The man takes a shuddering breath before gripping Ulaz’s arm with his own. “No.” 

“What do you mea-” 

“No,” Regris gasps again. “It’s too late. I can’t… feel, anything.” His eyelashes flutter and he sucks in a breath that doesn’t take. “I can’t see. I can’t see. Are you there?” 

Ulaz shudders as grief hits through the adrenaline. He doesn’t want this, he thinks nonsensically. Regris was a good man, better than this business deserved. But there’s too much blood, and he’s seen the deaths of hundreds by now, he knows the signs. Regris is right. 

“I’m here.” He folds the man’s cold fingers around his own and grips. They twitch weakly, barely tightening. There’s an eerie silence over them, even in the midst of enemy territory, broken only by the gasping rattle of the dying man’s breaths and Ulaz’s own heartbeat in his ears. _He doesn’t want this._

Movement catches his eye, and there he is. Ulaz was half expecting him from the time the mission went south, because he was always there when Ulaz’s missions went south. His own private harbinger in the form of a man. Slicked-back hair, coat down to his knees, casual business shirt underneath looking barely rumpled. Yellow eyes meet his before Ulaz’s gaze flickers to the muzzle of the gun pointed at his head. 

This is it. He’s trapped, cornered while bearing witness to the death of a friend, and there will be no miraculous escape this time. 

His eyes flick back up and Ulaz toys with the idea of closing them, of letting the last thing he sees be the backs of his eyelids or, maybe, Regris’ slack face, but no. Spite flares up in his chest, anger rises in him like the sun breaking through mist. If he’s going to die defenseless on his knees, he’ll damn well stare his killer down as he does. 

Regris’ body shudders with the rasp of a huge breath, and then there is only silence, unbroken.

The gun lowers. 

Ulaz grips the cold hand in his and doesn’t breathe as he watches the man turn his back and walk away. He should pull a gun, should spring to his feet and take this opportunity that he might never have again, should take out the man who’s become the bane of his existence – but his fingers refuse to unfreeze, to release Regris just yet. 

After what must be an eternity, Ulaz finally moves. Small explosives are planted around Regris as if by magic, Ulaz barely aware of his own movements. Time seems to slow down and speed up at random, his senses deadening and sharpening at odd intervals. He closes the dead man’s eyes before leaving, stepping over sparking metal shrapnel as he makes his way quietly out of the complex. The explosion is loud enough to hear from his car as he drives away, but instead of the road in front of him, he sees one image - the glint of a gold bullet buried in his dead friend’s chest. 

 

Finally, he gets a name. He’s been carrying his grudge for years by now, waiting until the next time he could find the man and make him pay for the people he’s killed. The two on the docks that first, dark night; Regris; and almost Ulaz himself. So many times, now, almost Ulaz, but somehow he’s still alive. 

It’s a simple assassination mission – a break, basically, from the operations he’s been contracted for over the past months – but the folder opens on the table before him like a gift, and there he is. _Thace._

The name seems too simple, as though his nemesis should have had one of those eleven-syllable names with his forefathers attached - _Thace, son of Tharagorn, first of his name, lost king of the – stop, Ulaz, focus._

Thace. Not only is Ulaz going to kill him, but he’s going to be _paid_ for it, and all the information he needs is being handed to him on a manila platter with paperclip garnish. 

The details… the details are odd. There is no mansion complex for him to invade, no armed guards to take out, no machine guns being paraded around to deter lesser agents than he. Thace isn’t to be found brooding in a penthouse apartment at the top of some tower in a sprawling city that never sleeps. 

Instead, the intel directs him to a broken-down shack in the middle of the Arizona desert. There’s no details on what Thace is doing there – instead there is a checklist of what the shack isn’t. It’s not his home. It’s not connected to a grid. It’s not part of a contract he’s been hired for. It’s, apparently, never been noticed by any of Thace’s enemies. It’s not heavily armed or guarded, in seemingly anyway. 

What it is, is in the middle of nowhere, with no roads leading to it and nothing around for miles - which means if Ulaz is going to sneak up on his enemy, he’s going to have to hike across the flat desert and hope Thace doesn’t happen to look out his window. 

He almost turns it down for that reason. Certain death, he thinks, making a target of himself for so long while hunting a gun specialist, but… it’s a chance to kill the man Ulaz hates in a place he never expected to be found. 

That’s how Ulaz finds himself hiking across cracked ground under the too-bright light of a waning crescent moon. For the desert, he thinks, it’s absolutely freezing. Nothing moves around him as he creeps towards the shack – there is no tell-tale slither of a snake across dried brush or puff of dust from a mouse hopping away. No chirp or buzz of whatever bugs might live in this wasteland. Just him, moving silently, as he was taught, in low, long strides up the crest of a hill that’s his best shot at hiding his approach. 

There are no lights on in the shack, no hint of any movement at all. It’s nearing one in the morning, and Ulaz knows there’s no possible way he’s going to get close to _this man_ , but he still hopes Thace will be asleep, and he’ll have a clean shot. He creeps around to the back, heading for what he suspects is the bedroom. He’s waiting for the click of a safety, the cock of a gun, any moment now. He knows there’s no way he’s this close and still alive. And yet… 

Ulaz stops just under the window and carefully, ever so carefully, inches up to peer inside. There is a man sleeping on a tiny, dusty bed. He’s built thick and wide, muscular thighs peeking out from boxers, skin reflecting dim moonlight. Even with the odd coloring of the light, Ulaz can tell this man is tan, the honest kind of tan that builds from working under the hot sun for months and years.

Most importantly, the man is not Thace. Ulaz checks and checks again, scanning over the man’s broad chest and thighs, but the height, the shoulder width, the bulk – it’s not quite right. Soon enough, the man turns to the window in his sleep, and Ulaz can’t fool himself anymore – he’s beautiful, but decidedly not his enemy. 

A snuffle, from slightly further away, startles Ulaz. He can’t believe he missed the detail in his initial scan – too focused on the target, a rookie mistake. 

There’s a crib in the corner. Ulaz’s heart lurches in his chest, turns and flips as he takes in the shock of dark hair and the sleeping face. The kid can’t be older than two or three, but the resemblance to the man on the bed is unmistakable.

Ulaz sinks down the side of the shack, fingers trembling slightly on the handles of his blades. He’s spying on a father and son, and if he had been less careful… he wasn’t, though. The man and his son are unharmed, solidly asleep with matching slack expressions. The child is safe, his father is safe, Ulaz would never harm them. The intel, though… the intel is solid, and what is his heartless enemy doing in this shack? 

He circles again, to the front this time, and scans the room through another window before easing in. A lumpy couch sits against the wall, and when Ulaz squints – yes, there he is. The man who has killed so many. The man who has seemed to haunt him, thwarting him whenever their paths cross. The man who killed his teammates, his friend, who single-handedly wiped out a room of trained guns over Ulaz’s bleeding body. The man who doesn’t miss, but whose gun Ulaz has stared down multiple times.

Ulaz stands and stares at Thace’s sleeping face, and this is _it_. If he doesn’t kill this man before he wakes up, there will be no way for Ulaz to make it out alive. It’s kill or be killed, and he draws his favorite blade soundlessly out of its sheath, picturing Regris’ dead eyes and shattered chest. 

He doesn’t move. 

Why had Thace stopped? Why had he walked away? He could have killed Ulaz in that moment, had _certainly_ recognized him, but instead of putting a bullet in him… he’d turned and walked away. Allowed Ulaz to give Regris their only possible version of a proper burial. Allowed him to walk away, once again. 

And before, at the massacre. There was no way Thace hadn’t known that Ulaz was still alive, but once again, he’d walked away – a witness. A danger, someone who could have traced Thace to the crime. A risk. Had he timed that first bullet on purpose? 

How many fucking times has Thace spared him – or even _saved_ him – without Ulaz realizing it? 

Ulaz slumps noiselessly into a chair and stares at the man sleeping before him. His enemy. No matter how many times he might have saved him, he still feels hate burn in his gut at the sight of that face. Thace is a danger, a risk. Ulaz can’t leave him alive. 

He can’t kill him, either. 

He realizes it over hours, staring at the body of his sleeping enemy until the sun threatens to rise over the horizon, willing himself to stride forward and finish it.

Ulaz doesn’t know what this murderer is doing here, sleeping on the couch of a decrepit desert shack with a toddler in the next room over, but he knows that there is no way he can leave Thace’s dead body for the man and his child to find. And, after all the times Thace has spared him… 

He’ll do the same. Just this once, in this vulnerable moment, miles and miles away from the dark streets where they do others’ dirty work. This one time, he’ll spare this man. 

Ulaz is two miles away and sprinting into the rising sun before Thace wakes. The man’s blood runs cold when he sees the chair in the corner. It’s just as he left it – everything is – but rested on the seat, standing perfectly in the center, is a bloody golden bullet. 

 

It’s exactly five years before Ulaz sees Thace again. He doesn’t know which time it is – had lost track somewhere between eight and ten and hadn’t been invested enough in the count to think about it. The man’s been mysteriously missing since Ulaz had spent a night watching him breathe deep, sleeping breaths until the sun rose. No yellow eyes picking him out in the darkness, no golden bullets in the chests of Ulaz’s friends, leading back to him like bread crumbs. 

Ulaz thinks it’s a blessing. His contracts have gone fluidly, flawlessly, without an opponent good enough to counter him. He tells himself it’s a good thing, Thace’s disappearance, and reminds himself whenever his thoughts stray to wondering. Had the man who contracted him sent someone else to kill his enemy? Had Thace heeded his warning? The man and the boy, too… were they still alive? 

Ulaz’s hands curled into fists whenever he thought of another killer retrieving the bounty on Thace’s head. He didn’t look closely at that. He told himself that they were enemies, and the thought of someone else overtaking a man who had seemed so invincible was unsettling. 

Eventually he’d decided to put his mind to rest. He’d watched woods and lakes pass by through his jeep windows and slowly turn into barren red dirt, cacti interrupting the flat landscape like spiny telephone poles. When he’d worked up the nerve to approach it in the bright light of day, he’d found the shack long deserted, but there were no bodies, no bloodstains. Ulaz didn’t know if he was glad. It only raised more questions to haunt him as his stare etched lines into the ceiling over his bed, into the hours of the early morning. 

It’s exactly five years later when Ulaz wakes to the familiar darkness of his apartment. There’s no sound of a break in, no change from what he can see, but the hairs on his arms and neck are standing straight up and he can feel it. _Wrong. Something is wrong._

There’s a foreign intake of breath and Ulaz is on his feet, across the room in the blink of an eye with his blade at the intruder’s throat. 

Neither of them breathes and the details filter in, fast and slow and impossible. Yellow eyes, slicked-back hair, business-fucking-casual shirt. 

Thace. 

Thace is in his apartment, sitting casually in his desk chair. He’s had the audacity to drape his coat - _the same long coat_ \- over the back of the chair and roll up his fucking sleeves, guns on display in the holsters under each arm that have always been hidden from Ulaz. How long has he been here?

Ulaz snarls, baring his teeth maybe a foot away from Thace’s blank expression, and the man doesn’t even twitch. This is the closest they’ve ever been, closer than Ulaz had dared to get on that night in the desert. Ulaz stares and stares, _in his apartment, how long, watching him, watching him sleep._

Thace breathes and Ulaz’s eyes flick to his neck, where thin skin expands against his razor-sharp blade. Ulaz can name every vein and artery, every muscle group and tendon in that neck, knows exactly where to cut to inflict pain and to cause fear and to kill in a matter of seconds, and he should _do it, just KILL HIM._

“Why am I still alive?” The words come tumbling out of his mouth without his intention, but the curiosity burns almost as brightly as his hatred for this man. _His enemy._ Sitting in his apartment, spread out casually in his chair as if he belongs here. 

He watches Thace swallow with purpose, watches his expression flicker slightly before he opens his mouth. 

“I keep asking myself the same fucking question.” Ulaz hates his voice, hates it more than anything else about the man, because it’s the exact deep tone that he could get lost in, that he could _melt_ in. Thace’s eyes burn into his, that strange shade of yellow that’s not quite gold. 

He knows exactly what he’s doing as he presses the blade in just a bit more, the sharpened edge cold and cruel-looking against the soft flesh of Thace’s neck. “You could have killed me. Tonight, and before. You didn’t.” 

“I could say the same,” Thace blinks as he says it and his jaw tightens just slightly. Ulaz sees it all. 

“I should have,” Ulaz snarls. “You won’t be getting any thanks from me, and I don’t take on debt, life or otherwise.” 

Thace’s eyes narrow. Ulaz can feel the heat of his gaze as it slowly travels over his features, from his hair to his chin.

“It was you, wasn’t it,” he finally breathes, yellow gaze flicking back up to Ulaz’s eyes. “In the shack. You left the bullet.” He finally moves, after remaining perfectly still for so long – he shifts closer, presses his skin into the blade as if he’s drawn forward. “I hunted down everyone else. The man who put the price on my head. Every agent I could think of who was skilled enough, who could have tracked me there. I killed them all, slaughtered a whole cell and nearly died doing it, and still didn’t find whoever was there that night.” His gaze fixes on Ulaz’s mouth and stays. “Because it was you.” 

Somehow, he’s gotten closer, even with a blade centimeters away from taking his life. Ulaz can smell stale smoke and liquor on his breath, can feel the warm puff of air against his lips with his words. 

“You killed my friend. Watched him die, watched him bleed out.” Watched Ulaz say goodbye. His hand trembles, just once, and his eyes track the streaks of solid gray at the sides of the man’s head – new, since he last saw him, and out of place on a man so seemingly young. “He was a good man.” He was _his_.

“I’ve killed hundred of friends. Dozens of good men. So have you.” His expression flickers again, still unreadable, but Ulaz sees the change. A drop of blood runs down the blade’s edge, almost black in the reflected moonlight. 

“I should kill you,” Ulaz says, and he wants to, he wants him dead, wants to see him bleeding out on his floor almost as much as he wants to see what he does next. 

“Do it then,” and the words are barely a whisper, hot against Ulaz’s lips, anger and rage and something else burning in Thace’s eyes, so close to his own. 

And then their lips are pressed together. 

Thace is kissing him. 

There’s a moment of frozen incomprehension as Ulaz sucks in a breath through his nose, and before he has time to think he’s pressing back, anger rising in his throat. His free hand finds Thace’s hair and he pulls him back, only for Ulaz to press in again, dominating the kiss, keeping the man’s head bent back so Ulaz can take his rage and pain and shove it into his mouth. 

A snarl rumbles out of Thace at the same moment Ulaz tastes blood, and there are hands on him, hauling him forward. He goes, if only to get a better vantage, slipping his thighs over Thace’s as the man’s fingers dig bruises into his hips. 

Ulaz is breathing hard when he pulls away, mouth twisting into a snarl again as he takes in Thace’s bitten-open lip. It’s easy, to slide the blade down and slice, soft fabric and rough leather falling away under the edge. Thace realizes he’s been disarmed half a second too late. His shirts and holsters fall to the floor, red wells up under shallow cuts Ulaz had left, and Thace throws the first punch. 

Ulaz is twisting before he hits the floor, but Thace lands on him before he can get his knees under him. His blade skitters away across the wood. A warm chest presses into his cold back – skin to skin, now, Ulaz still dressed only in the boxers he slept in – and he scrambles as Thace’s weight traps him.

“My house,” the man snarls, and grinds his hips into Ulaz’s ass. “You were in my house. My nephew... you watched us sleep. Could have killed us all.” His tone is growing angrier by the second, volume rising, and Ulaz knocks his head back, jabs with his elbow. Both miss, and Thace grinds him into the floor again. “How long were you in my fucking house?” 

“Hours,” Ulaz roars back, furious. He lashes his head back again and finally feels it hit, something hitting the back of his skull. He gathers his strength, knowing he has maybe two seconds, and shoves Thace off of him. The thought never occurs to him to flee. All he feels is hatred, and a growing hardness in his boxers that seems almost foreign with how out of place it is. 

He rolls and straddles Thace, riding the man’s attempt to buck him off. His punch lands, glances off of Thace’s jaw and the man’s hips buck up as his head smacks into the floor. A hand grapples at the side of Ulaz’s head and Ulaz grabs it, pins the wrist to the floor above Thace’s head. Their mouths are close again and Ulaz kisses him, shoves his tongue into Thace’s mouth with spite, taps at the sharp teeth just before they snap closed. Thace shoves his face away, slaps his cheek hard before grabbing his jaw and hauling him back down for more. Ulaz sees stars and sucks on his tongue, feels pressure grow low in his belly before biting at the tongue in his mouth and getting a growl. 

The distraction is enough for Thace to take advantage of and he throws Ulaz over again, knocking his back into the floor. Ulaz’s chest heaves as the breath leaves him, and he watches Thace climb to his feet. The glint of his blade catches Ulaz’s eye and he snatches it up, slices down Thace’s leg from hip to calf with a grin. He tears the dark slacks away from the man’s skin before Thace makes a grab for the blade and wrenches Ulaz’s wrist back until he’s forced to drop it. 

Another punch to Ulaz’s jaw, two, three, and Ulaz falls to the floor in a daze, stars exploding behind his eyes. 

“You spared us,” the growl in his ear seems too loud and there’s heat around his waist – hands, he realizes. The floor drops away, more skin presses hot against his side, and then gravity rights itself. The soft sheets of his bed are under him, under his back, and his boxers are slipping off his hips and down his legs. A thrill shoots through him - something between fear and an adrenaline rush - as his erection is bared to the cool room, and he’s far too aware of just how exposed he is to this murderer. 

Heat and weight descend over him. His spinning head finally settles just as Thace knocks his knees apart, settles bare thighs between them. A gasp leaves him as he feels it – Thace is just as hard, and the friction as their erections brush is _good, so good, fuck-_

“You warned me. If it had been someone else...” Thace’s yellow eyes are locked on his and Ulaz snarls, tries to headbutt him. Thace pulls back, just far enough for him to miss, and then grips his jaw. The back of Ulaz’s head hits the mattress with force and Thace holds it there, licks up his chin and across his lips. It stings, and Ulaz realizes his lip is split, that Thace is licking up the blood. The knowledge makes his toes curl. 

Their cocks brush as Thace claims his mouth again, the taste of blood harsh on his tongue. Teeth tease the split, trying to get more, sucking at it, and Ulaz shudders and gathers his thoughts, braces himself. He heaves Thace over his head with the last of his strength and grabs his second blade out from under the matress. 

Ulaz clambers over him before the man can recover and straddles him once more, holding the blade against his cheek. The tip rests just below the bone, close enough to the man’s eye to make him pause. Ulaz presses his forearm into Thace’s windpipe and snarls into his face. The man’s cock is an unmistakably hard presence under his ass and Ulaz grinds down, relishing the power, the smear of their mixed blood across Thace’s chest. 

“I’m gonna ride you before I cut your fucking throat,” he snarls, hovering over Thace’s mouth tauntingly. 

“You think I’ll let you?” Thace gasps, his chest heaving as he struggles to breathe around the arm pressing into his throat. Fingers find Ulaz’s nipple and twist, and he grinds down again at the spark of pleasure-pain. “That’s not how this is gonna go down.” 

The flash of a bloody grin is all the warning Ulaz gets before Thace nails him with a punch to the gut. Ulaz doesn’t let up. Thace hits his ribs and the muscles spasm, forcing his arm away from the man’s throat. That’s all the opening Thace needs and he hits him, writhes and grapples, superior strength fighting against Ulaz’s advantage of height and postion. The knife goes spinning away again as Ulaz gets an elbow into Thace’s chest and a knee hits his thigh. Thace dislodges him and they twist, each fighting to throw the other off balance, fists and knees and elbows hitting and missing in equal parts.

When the dust settles, Thace has Ulaz in a choke hold against his chest and one of his wrists pinned to the mattress above their heads. His cock grinds up between Ulaz’s ass cheeks as Ulaz gasps for air, fighting for each breath against the arm against his throat – muscle corded like steel cable. Somehow, he’s still hard despite the pain, maybe _because of_ the pain, his erection bobbing against his abdomen. 

Ulaz punches him twice in the side, awkward with the angle, and Thace doesn’t even flinch. 

“You’re gonna beg me for it,” Thace hisses into his ear, squeezing his grip on Ulaz’s wrist until it’s painful. The man’s cock catches on Ulaz’s rim and he’s dizzy, spinning, rock-hard. He’s never wanted to be fucked more. It catches again on another grind and Ulaz gasps, because this is going to _hurt_ and he _needs it_. 

“Fuck you,” he spits, when Thace lets him suck in a breath. The arm tightens again and Ulaz goes rigid, thought flying out of his head, he can’t _breathe._ He grinds back on Thace’s cock on instinct and he _needs_. 

“Try again,” comes the growl in his ear. “Beg.” Teeth close on the lobe of his ear. Ulaz’s fingers find their way into Thace’s hair and pull. The world is spinning too fast for him to catch up, the oxygen is gone, there’s a cock pressing dry at his entrance and he _needs._

Air rushes into his lungs and he takes the breath, takes another. “Fuck me,” he gasps out, and digs his heels into the bed so he can bear down.

Pain. His vision goes white with it. He’s being torn open, he can feel it – feel the skin tearing as his ass gives way. Thace is panting too, with pain and effort – but then he’s in, his cockhead sliding into Ulaz and another two inches following in a rush. Ulaz can’t relax, can’t adjust, doesn’t have time before Thace is moving again, relentlessly shoving further into him with each thrust, but _god_ its so good, it’s _so good_. He’s being filled more and more, oversensitive skin registering every bit of friction, every push and pull and drag. 

Ulaz’s head flies back, hanging in the open air over Thace’s shoulder as the pain pushes him to the edge faster than he’s ever gone before. He bears down again, forcing his hole to stretch wider, to take more, and his teeth clench. 

“Fuck me, you fucking-” He cuts off as Thace finally, _finally_ , gives a full thrust, from tip to balls, burying himself to the hilt. His thighs are knocked wider, his ass lifted higher as Thace plants his feet. The angle changes just enough and Thace starts in, thrusts in hard and fast and full. 

Ulaz _writhes_ his wrist twisting in the man’s hold, grunts and low sounds punching out of his throat as pain and pleasure flood him in equal parts. He can feel _everything,_ too much, the drag against his rim, the blood smeared across his skin drying in the cool air of the room. He’s spread out, bared, wild and tense with the onslaught of sensation. 

His heels finally catch where they’re scrabbling against the bed and he tightens every muscle, bears down on the cock in his ass and lifts himself up just slightly. Thace thrusts just that bit harder with the new freedom of movement and Ulaz jerks, feet slipping and just barely catching again, as Thace nails his prostate dead-on. He shouts and finally releases Thace’s hair so he can grasp at the arm around his throat. The cock hits it again an again and Ulaz gasps, yells, throws his head back and hears Thace groan in his ear as he tightens like a vice. 

“Pain slut,” the man spits into his ear. “Are you this much of a whore for everyone, or just for me?” Hatred, momentarily forgotten, lights again in Ulaz’s chest and he drops his weight, bucks up, tries to find a way out of Thace’s grip. The man shoves up into him and his mouth falls open but he refuses to scream, he _won’t_ not for this fuck. He has to _win._

Thace cuts his air off again and his thighs give out, muscles spasming as he slumps back onto Thace, the man’s cock still pounding a rhythm into him from the inside. _Too good. So close._ The arm leaves his throat and he sucks in air, chest heaving. 

Thace’s hand raises above his hips and Ulaz doesn’t put it together until the last second. “No!” The hand comes down, smacking across his balls and the base of his cock, and Ulaz’s eyes roll back in his head. “FUCK!” Blinding pain, incredibly intense, shoots through his groin and he jerks violently. The hand comes down again as his body arches and he can’t get away, and again, and Ulaz comes, writhing as he spills across his stomach. The orgasm shatters him, sending tremors through his body with the violence of it, causing what feels like every muscle he has to tense as he goes rigid and the world goes black. 

He wakes to a dark apartment, an empty bed. There’s no evidence of Thace – what they’d done or that the man had even been there – except for a full-bodied ache and sharp pain in his ass, and a tell-tale stickiness between his thighs. Every other detail was attended to. Even his blades had been placed back where he’d pulled them from. 

Ulaz has lived alone for over a decade - has never been bothered by that - and his apartment has never felt like it was missing something. 

It did now. 

 

 

Ulaz is fast approaching a birthday he’d never thought he’d live to see when the message comes. It’s a surprise, to be confronted with a dark figure and a code he hadn’t heard in twenty years, but the response is engraved into his brain, and it rolls off his tongue without hesitation. 

The news is, possibly, even more surprising. Kolivan has come out of retirement – risen out of whichever jungle he’d escaped into to find peace – and he’s being summoned. 

Excitement rises and falls through Ulaz with the beating of his heart as he scopes the place out. Their old hunting grounds, abandoned after the group had dissolved to pursue individual careers. Shadows move about his peripheral, but he doesn’t fear them – they’re his brothers, doing the same as he is currently, circling their destination to check and recheck their security. One by one, they descend from the rooftops, masks in place, and enter. Ulaz waits until he can’t stand to wait any longer, and then takes his turn. 

The halls of the base are dusty, but the sconces are lit. His footsteps beat a too-familiar pattern on the floor as he heads in deeper – common courtesy, to announce your approach rather than hide it in a time of peace. The doors to the command center are open, and he slips inside. 

A quick scan of their table as Ulaz takes his old, familiar spot shows a dozen empty seats. It’s to be expected, of course – his gaze lingers half a second longer on Regris’ chair – and there will be time to mourn later. Those of them who survived keep their masks on while they wait, and Ulaz finds comfort in Antok’s incredible height and broad shoulders – familiar, so familiar, all of them. There was no need to remove masks when you’d seen and memorized bodies and breathing patterns and micro-movements. 

Every few minutes, another slips through the door and finds their place. Ulaz names them in his head, one by one. No one speaks. 

Another surprise comes – a boy, unmasked, but wearing their uniform. Dark hair and purple eyes, and an expression that’s almost sullen. There’s a flutter of movement around the table as hands find the hilts of their blades, but they freeze almost immediately. 

Kolivan enters behind the boy. He throws a gesture to the room at large - _stand down_ \- and directs the boy towards an empty chair close to the head of the table. The boy goes, his chin high and his gaze flicking warily from mask to mask as he takes his seat.

Kolivan stands at the head of the table. “Friends.” Kolivan’s deep rumble travels the length of the room and, although the formality remains, Ulaz feels the tension break. “Brothers. Blades. Most of you have already guessed why I’ve brought you here.” 

Silence grows again as Kolivan’s eyes travel around the table, from mask to mask. Even through the barrier, their eyes seem to meet when Kolivan looks at him, and Ulaz warms with long-dormant affection for their leader. 

“We first began as a tiny rebellion against an unbeatable foe. A ragged band of ex-cons and ex-soliders. Mercenaries finding a common cause. We grew larger, became closer, got better. And, against all odds, we defeated him.” The triumph and pride of that victory rings clear in Kolivan’s voice. 

“Unfortunately… he was injured, but not killed. He’s been quiet, all these years, but the signs are unmistakable, and the whispers have grown to shouts. Zarkon rises again.”

Ulaz’s eyes close. He’s heard the rumors, seen the evidence in the presence of the Sentries and the rising death toll, like the shockwaves of an earthquake spreading out from a city he’d vowed never to return to - but he’d hoped… he’d hoped. 

“It is time for the Blades to reconvene and take action, before he gets any stronger. It will be no easier than before – of this I’m sure. I can not promise you victory. I can not promise you a bloodless battle, or that any one of us will survive. But we must take action.” Kolivan’s shoulders rise and fall with a deep breath. Antok’s fingers twitch on the table immediately to their leader’s right – his second in command, the first and most loyal of the Blades. 

“I understand,” Kolivan pauses, uncharacteristically, and then continues. “I understand that you all have grown and changed. It is inevitable, after so long. It brings me joy to see all of you – every single Blade that still lives – here at this table, answering the call. However, in this moment, you are released from your duty. Any debt you owe to me is considered paid, and if you wish to leave, do so now, and go with my blessing. No ill will will follow you.”

The tension rises again, thick and cloying. Heads turn as they wait with baited breath. No one leaves. 

Kolivan’s mouth twists into a grave smile. “Very well.” 

He falls into a familiar pace, and his tone changes. “We have two advantages going into this battle. The first is a new alliance with a neighboring force. They are new, but their roots are ancient – you all will be meeting them later on.” The boy stiffens at the words, but doesn’t take his eyes off of their leader. Ulaz notes it, and sees half a dozen others doing the same.

“The second is a resource I had hoped to never have to call on. Shortly after the first victory, I was approached by a man who was convinced that Zarkon still lived – and rightly so, as we’ve learned. He was high in the ranks of Zarkon’s organization, and he and I have stayed in contact. He’s been working from the inside, and I’m sure many of you have encountered him before. I’m ordering you now – the same trust you put in me, put in him as well. He has been faithfully on our side all along.” 

_A double agent?_ Ulaz trusts Kolivan with his life – all of them do – and that trust is implicit. None of them would raise a weapon to a guest of his, so why all of the warning? 

A last man enters the room as if he had been waiting for Kolivan’s words. Every mask turns towards him and follows as he strides around the table, but he keeps his yellow eyes locked on Kolivan. 

Ulaz can’t breathe. 

An age passes and the man reaches their leader’s left side, nods to him, and turns to face the group. 

“This is Thace,” Kolivan introduces. “He is one of us, and you will all be working with him closely.”


End file.
